Spot contact at from high altitude.

[Janosch]

Other methods... depending on server, "enemy external views" and "padlock" may be allowed, but these fall into the cheat category, and I can't confirm that padlock locks on to targets that are a great distance away.

It's also possible that low flying opponents communicate via teamspeak to the high flyers. On some servers, there are even AI flights, and they use the radio too, so if you know their position, you might get some idea as to where the opponents are.

As for filters, the only filter one should disable is the cigarette filter, and cigarettes too in general. And be sure not to overstress your eyes! Trying to find a dot or lump of pixels that's flying over a e.g. a snowy forest or ocean is tiresome, and you may find that it's impossible to focus your eyes properly after awhile.

[KG26_Alpha]

A lot of the online wars and campaigns are fought with some of the best hardware set to the lowest settings to gain increased range on "dots" and lowered game settings removes buildings exposing only ground objects to be destroyed in online competitions.

Test it your self

640x480
Set all graphics to lowest settings in IL2 1946 main gui

Perfect mode & 1680x1050


Lowest settings & 640x480




Flying around looking for ground targets on these settings makes them easier to spot and kill, the same goes for aircraft they are like huge bricks rather than tiny dots.











.

[Racetrack]

This smell like a legal cheat and very Unreal

[KG26_Alpha]

Competition brings out the worst in some people,
but its part of the game and not possible for the host to lock these settings,
so its up to the user to make it look like what he wants.

Whole squads fly low res and settings so they can see enemy air and ground targets easier in some online wars.

Not for me, but then I stopped flying in online wars due to the bomber/log file hack from years ago long before the sound hack then the speed hack and the radar hack etc etc etc









.

[Laurwin]

In all honesty it can be pretty hard to play online with higher res (let's say you have a good size monitor resolutionwise - you would normally play games at the native resolution).

You get bounced way more often. Which incidentally is what would have happened in real life if you had bad eyesight. (although realistically you WOULD have good eyesight if you were a fighter pilot in the war - the doctors tested these things after all with recruits)

But were looking at a computer representation of reaelity when playing the game. (it's not perfect sensory experience for real visibility conditions)

The only cheat in real life would be basically having a "much better than normal" eyesight (with American eyesight chart it would be like 20/10 vision, much better than the "normal healthy" 20/20)

Chuck yeager (still alive isn't he?) has/had pretty good eyesight back in the war days. I suppose that musthave helped him in the war. But then again, he was shot down in combat by the Germans so it didn't exactly speaking save his life or anything.

I spotted targets way better online, at one notch lower resolution than my native res 1680x1050. The game graphics did look really shitty though.

It was full rael serrver I believe - although it was hsfx and older version of il2 than the most modern 4.12. Conditions were mostly clear weather, noon, lot of sunlight.

Does the most modern stock game 4.12, improve the visibility of planes or effect the visibility in any way? Compared to hsfx?

Also, the easiest ways to actually spot anything with eyballs, is two things; contrast, and relative movement. Contrast is easy, you can see black object against white background from so SO far away that you should really avoid doing these things if you want to stay hidden. (this applies to flying above a cloud, because clouds are white, planes are dark, you get seen)

relative movement, is that you see something moving, which ratioanlly and logically should not be moving at all in that manner (or indeed there should not be anything special in that location, yet something special has caught your eye, (usually it means a foreign object)

Spotting for enemies, stay calm and brave, don't panic because there is no reason to, youre still alive arent you hehe? Move your neck slowly, and scan the skies in a methodic manner.

Flying in a schwarm (finger four) formation, with radio communications on microphone really can help in surviving the surprise attacks. (more eyeballs scanning, more brains are processing data, more portions of the sky are being scanned per second, more work is being done, per unit of time, you are being more powerful and safer)

[Janosch]

Here's an idea: why not have the game autokick players that use too low settings? It's 2013, and there's no legit reason to use minimum settings for anything else than... uhhh... some kind of testing? Make it a hyperlobby realism setting too:

[x] Medium settings required for players

Or maybe it could just show some kind of symbol next to the playername in the playerlist for those who use poor gfx settings.

btw I have to disagree with bravery and panicking: bravery is bad, panicking is good. There's always a reason for panic. Discretion is the better part of valour etc

[Laurwin]

Originally Posted by Janosch

Here's an idea: why not have the game autokick players that use too low settings? It's 2013, and there's no legit reason to use minimum settings for anything else than... uhhh... some kind of testing? Make it a hyperlobby realism setting too:

[x] Medium settings required for players

Or maybe it could just show some kind of symbol next to the playername in the playerlist for those who use poor gfx settings.

btw I have to disagree with bravery and panicking: bravery is bad, panicking is good. There's always a reason for panic. Discretion is the better part of valour etc

Yea, but from what I've understood about the game settings and visibilitysettings is that at low resolution, the bogeys in the sky are much more noticable at longer distances (the infamous dot range phenomenon in IL-2)

How would you enforce medium settings that way, you would have to have some kind of resolution fix after all? To make it so that the low resolution doesn't gain ridiculous advantage in spotting ability.

I was watching history channel dogfights and there was an interview of the Israeli ace pilot Giora Epstein. He said that an average fighter pilot would see an enemy (jet fighter?), at about 8-12 miles distance (presumably nose-to-nose)

Epstein also said that he himself could see bogeys far away in the distance of about 24 miles. (he was acknowledged to have extraordinarily sharp eyesight, by the standards of fighter pilots)